She came to the story with an expectation of the story she was going to write - a consumer-focused story about the finger prick stuff. You say "predetermined framing", as if she's covering a political issue and is biased, but what you're actually talking about is just the normal process of "reporter comes up with an idea for a story, and goes out to see if they can get it done". This is no more problematic than, say, a reporter going to the zoo with the "predetermined framing" of writing a story on a Panda bear.
She wasn't 'bribed'. I don't see any supporting evidence for that whatsoever. Theranos PR tried to get her to back off by threatening to pull the interview with Holmes, but the reporter didn't agree to that, so it didn't happen.
She sat on the story not because she "couldn't spin it the way she had intended" but because the story she set out to write simply wasn't there. She couldn't write a consumer-focused story about "less is more" without finding patients actually getting the finger prick, and she couldn't find any patients getting the finger prick. What she did find was a bunch of suspicious behavior, but the suspicious behavior alone wasn't a story.
Yes, she could have decided to spend a while digging in the hopes of uncovering a different story altogether about Theranos. But I can't really fault her for not doing that. Maybe (without knowing anything about the journalist) that kind of investigative reporting isn't what she does? Maybe she knew that kind of story would take a ton of work, if it even went anywhere, and she didn't have the time to do it? Maybe she knew her editor wouldn't approve that kind of story? Or something else entirely. Most likely, she just had some suspicious stuff, but didn't have enough to sustain the belief that Theranos was actually engaged in widespread fraud, and so decided that it wasn't worth spending a bunch of time tracking down the likely-innocuous explanation, especially since a Theranos lawyer promised her that more than 50% of test were done with a finger prick.
She came to the story with an expectation of the story she was going to write - a consumer-focused story about the finger prick stuff. You say "predetermined framing", as if she's covering a political issue and is biased, but what you're actually talking about is just the normal process of "reporter comes up with an idea for a story, and goes out to see if they can get it done". This is no more problematic than, say, a reporter going to the zoo with the "predetermined framing" of writing a story on a Panda bear.
She wasn't 'bribed'. I don't see any supporting evidence for that whatsoever. Theranos PR tried to get her to back off by threatening to pull the interview with Holmes, but the reporter didn't agree to that, so it didn't happen.
She sat on the story not because she "couldn't spin it the way she had intended" but because the story she set out to write simply wasn't there. She couldn't write a consumer-focused story about "less is more" without finding patients actually getting the finger prick, and she couldn't find any patients getting the finger prick. What she did find was a bunch of suspicious behavior, but the suspicious behavior alone wasn't a story.
Yes, she could have decided to spend a while digging in the hopes of uncovering a different story altogether about Theranos. But I can't really fault her for not doing that. Maybe (without knowing anything about the journalist) that kind of investigative reporting isn't what she does? Maybe she knew that kind of story would take a ton of work, if it even went anywhere, and she didn't have the time to do it? Maybe she knew her editor wouldn't approve that kind of story? Or something else entirely. Most likely, she just had some suspicious stuff, but didn't have enough to sustain the belief that Theranos was actually engaged in widespread fraud, and so decided that it wasn't worth spending a bunch of time tracking down the likely-innocuous explanation, especially since a Theranos lawyer promised her that more than 50% of test were done with a finger prick.